ISU: You taught this?

I tried to watch the video of Monday’s Normal Town Council, but never made it past Public Comment.

Marc Tiritilli is still the voice of reason and fiscal responsibility. I dare you to watch his comments without standing and cheering when he finishes, or shedding a tear that he is not Normal’s Mayor by 12 votes. Just hit play:

Keep listening when Marc is done. I believe Mayor Koos called the next speaker Wes Wood:

Wes claims to be a Finance Major at ISU. He also claims the first thing he was taught in the Finance Department was:

Debt creates Value

He needs to ask Detroit if that is true.

He needs to ask all the people underwater on their mortgages if that is true.

(I could go on)

Wes is under the false impression that Normal is going to pay for the underpass themselves and they should borrow the money to do it. Normal wants the broke Federal Government or the even broker State of Illinois to pay for it. He must have missed the conversation several meetings ago where it was stated Normal can’t borrow any more money without new revenue sources (taxes).

According to the very expensive education Wes is getting at ISU, Illinois has tons of value because they have lots of debt. I wonder why they can’t pay their bills?

Wes gets even funnier talking about Uptown. He dearly loves it, but he tells visitors to avoid it because it’s too difficult to navigate.

The Town of Normal needs to hire Wes. He fits right in.

I hope your kid isn’t majoring in Finance at ISU.

Attn: People who speak during Public Comment

It’s illegal for them to ask you to state your address. It’s just another way to intimidate you or ignore your opinions based on where you live!

Comments

Wes Wood is confused…selective listening. Debt creates value in the PRIVATE sector as entrepreneurs borrow, grow, hire and pay taxes. Debt incurred by the PUBLIC sector…i.e. the GOVERNMENT…does not create value.

What are Koos/Peterson gonna do when TIGAR funding runs out later this year? They’re gonna come to the Normal taxpayer. These people are disgusting, but we got the govt we deserve.

If Wes really believed that than I suggest he maxes out all his credit cards, Buy the most expensive vehicle he can and spend baby spend. Just think of all the value he would create and fun times. Well at least until the bill comes do. He won’t be able to raise taxes on everyone like government can.

The speaker is Wes Ward, who I believe was part of Renner’s campaign group and works for other Democrat candidates in the area.

I disagree with Ward. Debt can create value if the payoff from incurring debt is a better benefit. If we are borrowing $1 million on a project and what we gain from it each year is greater than the principal and interest costs, then it makes sense to borrow. However, how often has the Town of Normal or City of Bloomington invested in something that has gained more than it has cost? Doesn’t seem to have happened with the Coliseum, BCPA, or any TIF district.

I give credit to students who want to be informed, but perhaps he didn’t realize that debt can create value – negative value – for citizens.

We had idiots like that when I went to I.S.U. also.. You’ll ALWAYS fins some “against the grain” folks in every department. It’s like a Creationist being a Geology major and tell the professor that there’s NO WAY the trilobite can be 100 million years old.
Because the bible tells them so..

I must agree with the above comment. I too am a student of isu in the school of business (the STATE FARM school of business, that is, who’s funding maintains ISU’s ability to provide exceptional facilities and staff) and only a moronic, incompetent business mind could fathom such a ludicrous statement. There is not a single member of the Illinois state business or mathematics staff that would agree with him, and I must say that I personally couldn’t help but scream at my screen as I heard is ridiculously ill informed statement. Any who, to adress your statements… Yes, illinois is quite expensive, that’s not their fault, it comes down to the state. Our wonderful record of choosing the worst possible people to represent us (ie rauner, Quinn, Blagojevich, Koos – over and over and over again -, and more congressmen(to cater to the more liberal readers I will note this is not a gender specific term, it is completely fluid and refers to any human being who is elected to office within the senate or house of representatives within the United States of America) than I could list here, has brought us a post high school public education system that costs more than almost every other state in the Union. Also, while I am a firm believer and supporter of trade schools, it’s not for everyone. You cannot possibly say that college isn’t for everyone but then decide that everyone should see your value in going to a trade school; it’s utter nonsense. While I see your point of pointing out Mr Ward’s idiocies, your statement comes off as, while we’ll meaning, completely idiotic. By the same argument I could consider a high school history teacher ignorant in the achievements of Henry Ford because said teacher has an education degree and not an ACE certification.

I mean no insult here by the way, I only wanted to inform you to the lack of intelect portrayed by your statement.

But he is a Valedictorian and probably on sport scholarship for track/field. His family lives in town so he may not pay for housing. This millennials’ understanding of debt explains the financial problems recent graduates have.

Debt creates Value,,,sorry Wes but this is not a one size fits all blanket statement, especially in the context of suggesting Normal takes on more debt that they cannot repay. Raise taxes too high and the tax base will be destroyed. Perhaps you should consider a new major besides finance, lol.

It’s often said in the finance departments of higher education that finance majors are mathematicians who don’t want to be mathematicians. There are several ways of reading that, but I will focus on one.

My experience as a finance major (now 25 years on) was that it was a long monotonous never ending series of cost-benefit analysis, with the time-value of money being the primary determining factor in decision making.

Lemmetellya folks….that’s a lot of math. In that two year period, I could have gone toe-to-toe with Einstein and Hawkings.

Applying those models on public sector financing is fraught with a horror show of numbers that no one in their right minds would trust. My opinion of what passes for analysis of public sector projects is that they are a reflection of what is ‘dreamed of’ and what numbers are needed to show how such dreams can come true.

An example: Arenas are fixed structures with fixed and on-going costs associated with them. Those numbers, along with a reasonable depreciation schedule of its value, should be easy enough to come by – a days work, once you’ve gathered all the numbers.

The private sector would have began this project with the observation or idea that a venue, like a sports arena, could be built for the purpose of making money. Cost and financing analysis are pretty straight forward. The analytical risk is in how believable their demand projections are. Those are subjected to rather harsh critiques focused on their realism. More often than not, most of those ideas die well deserved deaths at this point.

In other words, $40 million projects are not financed over a handshake after lunch at Rosie’s.

The public sector, more often than not, begin such projects with the notion that if you build it, they will come. The question of how believable their numbers are never form a basis for any worthy objection to the project. The only true issue is whether or not the taxpayers can carry the burden – can taxes be raised enough to pay for the debt required to build this project?

Think about that. The determining factor in public sector projects is how much your elected officials can victimize you.